SEO accounts for such a vast part of the digital marketing sector, that it’s best to break down the various key components to be able to understand it better.
Indeed, SEO is such a large area, that many use the initials to describe anything to do with online marketing.
But basically, it comes down to a number of important areas which can firstly be divided into two: onsite and offsite.
Their meaning is as you would guess: one concerns anything that happens on the website; offsite anything that happens off it.
Onsite activities would include keyword research, metadata, webpage copy, website design (in terms of its look, which can also affect ranking) navigation and content; whereas offsite focuses on back linking, article submissions and online PR.
All these areas are crucially linked together and when they act in harmony, the result is a well set-up balance. Get one part wrong, or with the wrong emphasis, and a website rankings’ can suffer.
Indeed, get the onsite wrong, and you might as well forget any offsite marketing. The basics have to be right before anyone starts out on an offsite SEO campaign.
Crucially, keyword research and metadata are the main building blocks to get you started. If you don’t get the right selection of key words and key phrases that allow the automated search engine bots to do their job of properly indexing your website, then you’ll find it very difficult to get noticed.
Many people wrongly believe that its design first and SEO second. In fact, they should work hand in hand.